Mentoring/Formal/USA

This new page is currently undergoing modifications. The information presented should be considered a draft, not yet ready for use. If you would like to contribute to this content, please consider posting in the US Wiki Discussion forum first to discuss your ideas.

Overview

Note: A team is working on this page as the US specific page for the soon to be launched Mentoring program.

Mentoring is a great way to learn from those with more experience or to pass down your experience to others, but the interaction usually ends up helping everyone and creating a better Waze community for all. Typically a Mentor is much more experienced than a Mentee. In some cases a Mentor may have less general experience but significant specialty knowledge in one or more topics. For instance, such a Mentor may know a lot about a regional issue, city, or state, or type of road system.

For convenience, we divide mentoring into to types: Informal and Formal.

Informal Mentoring goes on all the time when one Wazer asks a question of another and when one Wazer helps another. We encourage you engage in such interaction and have some ideas for you here. Examples include the Waze Forum, WME Chat, dialog through Private Messages, and much more. Informal Mentoring is a great way to see if you're interested in Formal Mentoring.

Formal Mentoring intended to provide an opportunity for deeper dialog between a Mentee and Mentor through an enjoyable one-on-one interaction. It is intended to more quickly advance the skill, social network, and editing level of Mentee as well as benefit the Mentor. Formal Mentoring has an agreed upon objective, start, and end. Formal mentoring is intended to augment, not replace Informal Mentoring. Formal Mentoring is conducted by a Waze-approved group of Mentors.

Informal Mentoring

Formal Mentoring

Can take place anytime, without any special process to set up the process Task oriented: solve a current problem in editing and nothing more (e.g., how to fix a particular junction that is giving bad directions or bad map appearance) Generally lasts a few minutes or a few hours, with little to no recurring communication expected Not expected to significantly change the abilities of the Mentee No expectation for change in rank during or after the mentorship

Must come to a formal agreement to start the mentorship, after careful selection of partners Goal oriented: intended, to improve a particular mentee skill, not a particular feature on the map Repeated interaction, in a defined range of time on a specific range of topics, to improve that skill Expectation is to upgrade the mentee skills, allowing the mentee to rise in rank or at least close the gap toward a rise in rank. At mentor discretion, mentee may receive a (temporary) rank change to facilitate the mentorship.

Informal Mentoring

TBD

Formal Mentoring

TBD